Wedding hell?

doodoot

Reading the thread about paying for a pageboy's outfit has got me thinking about the arguments that arose during our wedding plans.

What wedding hell did any of you go through?

(Thought it would be a good idea to reminisce so that those about to embark could get some ideas/advice about how to handle it).

The only problems that we had was to do with guest lists for the ceremony and reception/party.

My MIL decided to invite her sister and BIL - from the Channel Islands! - without asking us, and we only found out after they had booked and paid for the flights. :eek:

So because DH's aunt and uncle were coming, my aunts and uncles kicked off about not being able to come to the ceremony...so lots of friends had to be bumped out. :mad:

(One couple have subsequently stopped speaking to me because of it).

Then there was the fear about DH's divorced mum and dad being in the same room - they divorced 30 years ago but she still hasn't let the anger go.

So I told her that if she kicked off then she would be sent home in a taxi...thankfully all she did was have a long face for the whole day. :T

So my advice to anyone about to get married is to either go to Gretna Green and grab a couple of strangers off the street for witnesses, or go abroad! :rotfl:

VestanPance

None.

Paid for it all myself and we invited who ever we wanted. Maybe lucky in the fact there was no family drama or conflicts on either side that could have arose.

Desperado99

Well we did have the obligatory couple getting busy in the ladies toilets.....

Except they weren't actually a couple, as the woman's husband was on the dancefloor at the time. So when my mum went back to work on the monday, instead of "didn't the bride look lovely!" all she got was "someone was getting it on in the loos".

The people in question were workmates of my OH and it was his last week working there.... and she denied everything for a while, but apologised to my OH about a year later. It was the fact that she chose to break her vows while we were celebrating making ours that grated really.

Apart from that, it was a lovely day

angelil

I got married abroad (in France, because I live here/husband is French).
My problems therefore were mainly paperwork issues. My birth certificate needed to be translated, as in France your birth certificate is what you produce to prove you have never been married (long story short: they have one piece of paper for everything, so your "birth certificate" is also where marriages, divorces and your death are recorded). We tried explaining to the town hall that this proves nothing except my identity (and they already had proof of that anyway thanks to my passport) but they weren't having any of it - so that was €60 to have it translated. Furthermore, the translation has to be dated less than 3 months before the wedding, so we had two choices: either only book all the wedding stuff months before the date (not an appealing prospect, you understand, given that we had family, including elderly relatives, coming from England for the wedding and that this takes a bit more than 3 months to put together!), or book more than 3 months ahead and pay for the translation twice. We therefore went with the latter - even though the translator I originally used decided she didn't need to see the original piece of paper again and just changed the date and pressed print (so that was another €60 just for that!).
Ultimately, though, we could have just booked three months ahead and paid once, as we were married on a Friday morning in April - hardly high season.
Not that I have any advice for anyone on the basis of all this mind you

Kaz2904

DH's from a large family. His Mum is one of 7. All of her brothers and sisters were invited but not all of their (adult) children. I went through the guest list and looked at all these names of people who I didn't know and said to DH "Would you take them out for a meal on any other occasion? If not, they aren't coming". He agreed and straight away I crossed out the names of cousins I'd never met. Then we worked our way down. All of the ones we invited who had young children (minors) the children were invited.
MiL went mad when she looked at the list. She said we'd left off too many people and they'd complain. I said if I had't met them in the 3.5 years we'd been together, that was fine. She moaned about me being able to invite everyone in my family and DH had to pick and choose but DH pointed out that even with his family significantly trimmed down, they still outnumbered mine by 2:1.
She then also had a problem with the wine we got for the toasts. She insisted we had Asti
"Kaz2904, aren't there people in your family who will look at the label and say something if they don't think it's good enough wine?"
"Errr, no, none of them are rude enough."
She got into such a hissy fit about it that we said if she was that set on having Asti, she could pay the difference because we couldn't afford to. We weren't fussed about it so if she was that bothered, she could stump up the extra expense. We had to pay for nearly all of our wedding so we did it as cheaply as possible. It's annoying when you get people making assumptions about who's funding it but we saved up for 18 months to be able to do it and it was still a struggle then!

lovecrafting

mine was a good day, made all the funnier by my next door neighbour being on a first date and as it got to eleven ish his date told him that her girlfriends were having a naked hot tub party and did he want to go along and join in, he declined within earshot of everyone outside.. it was made all the funnier when everyone at the same time went "what do you mean no?"

as for arguments there was the argument because we didnt have (or want) a traditional cake so we opted for a tesco special. the omg they have chosen a biker pub for a reception and at the actual ceremony there was the omg oh no she didnt moment when i turned up on a harley lol.

but for us the day was perfect, we did what we wanted to do and anyone that came along were there to help us celebrate not to moan about the day, so any moaning they were told to go away. selfish yes. but it was our wedding not theres

paulrn_2

The wedding was fine the marriage was hell

Amanda65

My MIL to be phoned me up about 6 weeks before and asked what I thought about an outfit she wanted to wear - it was completely white :rotfl::rotfl: I kid you not. She ended up in green and black thank goodness.

She then had to be half carried from the evening reception due to the amount of alcohol she had consumed (at my father's expense :eek:).

Weird_Nev

Ours went well, really. We had a beautiful venue (a budget castle in scotland!) A 14th century chapel to get married in, a banqueting hall with BBQ'd local produce, BBQ'd Scottish salmon, free range chicken and Beef, along with Pork Sausages for Dinner which was by candlelight as the sun set. No electric lighting in the place! Followed by a Ceilidh band and drinking and dancing into the night.

Our only troubles were:
1) The Grans couldn't travel that far which was a shame but they understood and we made a beautiful photo book for them both so they could share the day. I took my laptop and the photos to show them.
2) We had limited guest numbers, 56, and my family is bigger than my OH's so things were indeed a bit squewed towards me. But everyone we really cared about (bar grans) were there so that's what was important. It was very intimate.
3) I booked the wedding car to take us from the castle back into Edinburgh to our hotel. Only a Mercedes but just something to be whisked away in. Only what turned up was a battered Toyota Carina stinking of the drivers Fish and chips. What made it worse was on getting into Edinburgh it quickly became clear that the driver had no idea where our Hotel actually was despitethis being part of the booking, so we drove around for a quarter of an hour with her asking people out of the window. NOT COOL. WIfe was exhausted and fuming. Still, it got her prepared for a life married to me!

All in all it was a brilliant day with very little stress. We organised it with about 10 phone calls, the caterers were absolutely fantastic (they went well above and beyond the price we paid in their service and quality of the food - including when it looked like we were running low on wine they drove to a local supermarket and bought us another 20 bottles, and when the invoice came it was all just charged at supermarket prices!), I hired a kilt, my wife's dress was under £100 but she looked stunning, and it was just a brilliant, beautiful day.

Oh, and as this is MSE, it came to about £6,000 including a 2 week honeymoon in Croatia. Where I lost my wedding ring. But that's another story.

neneromanova

Amanda65 wrote: »

My MIL to be phoned me up about 6 weeks before and asked what I thought about an outfit she wanted to wear - it was completely white :rotfl::rotfl: I kid you not. She ended up in green and black thank goodness.

She then had to be half carried from the evening reception due to the amount of alcohol she had consumed (at my father's expense :eek:).

My Wedding is in September and this is the one thing I dread most from MIL. The fact that for her sons first wedding she wore cream/white really worries me.

I'm tempted to put on the invites that if anyone turns up in white/cream/ivory then they will be swiftly sent home

purple.sarah

Not had the wedding yet but we've had a couple of wedding planning hell moments! Yesterday we went to give notice at the registry office, we took our birth certificates and our mothers birth certificates as instructed, were questioned separately to make sure the wedding was legal and then they asked for proof of address...We didn't have it with us! I swear they didn't mention it on the phone when I was writing the requirements down. I panicked because the next appointment to give notice was not until after our wedding date so I thought it would be cancelled! I had to make an emergency call to our bridesmaid, who is also our housemate, to grab the file holding all our important documents and rush it into town. We had a nail-biting wait and then the nice registrars squeezed us in at the end of the day. So the lesson there is always double check what documents you need!

Also a friend of ours who is an amateur photographer and was due to do our photos has just pulled out 2 weeks before the wedding! I literally read the email while I was in the middle of this post so had to put it in! It can't really be helped because we weren't paying her and she has been offered a job interview that day but it is a shame, we were looking forward to it and thought she was too and we can't afford to pay a professional so I'm panicking now. The lesson here is if you don't have a contract have a back up plan, a friend saying they will help is not written in stone if circumstances change.